Vince McMahon Makes Shocking Claim About WWE Fans

During the Quarter 3 earnings call today, Vince McMahon spoke about several topics. Of course, he talked about the earnings and profits. Even with television ratings down, WWE had a very profitable year.

So, if fewer people are watching, does this mean Vince McMahon is concerned about his fan base? He made a statement during the call which seems shocking when you consider what the television ratings are telling us:

“When you look at television ratings, that’s what they are. With us, it’s one of our many measurements. When you look at total, when you get into YouTube, etc… we have far more fans now than we have ever had. When you look at television ratings, it is what it is. Not to say we don’t want to increase them, of course we do. Aside from that, our total audience is much bigger, so you can’t just hang your hat on ‘ratings are down.’ Without question, we have to have a mothership, and we do with Raw and SmackDown, and from there, clips and comments and other videos, take it to the next week or the next year. We’re never off the air. It’s fine to say ratings are down, I wanted to give you that bit of color in terms of overall viewpoint.”

More fans than ever? It’s hard to imagine this to be true. The most viewed video on YouTube from WWE this week was the Hell in a Cell highlight video with 3.9 million views. Raw drew 1.7 million viewers this week.

If you were to say each of those 3.9 YouTube views were a different person watching 1 time and added it to Raw’s audience for this week, you’re getting 5.6 million. The very best rating Raw ever drew was 8.1 million people.

On the other hand, WWE does have 68 million YouTube subscribers. So, does that make it true?

I guess you can make data tell any story you want. Thanks to Fightful.com for the transcription of the quote.

• Ratings
• fans
• Vince McMahon
• wwe

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